Missing Heart
by Lancer1968
Summary: Scene Ramblings from "The Kid"


Missing Heart

Summary: Scene Ramblings from "The Kid"

Any and All Disclaimers Applicable

# # #

Missing Heart by Dwight Yoakum

I am a missing heart  
With no place left to start  
To ever find my way  
Around these empty parts  
Oh I'm a missing heart

I am an open wound  
In need of time and room  
With the space to heal  
Any loss that looms  
Oh I am an open wound

I searched so long  
And all that I found is now gone  
Because anywhere I looked was always wrong

I am a pleading voice  
Lacking any choice  
But to be the truth  
Over all the noise  
I am a pleading voice

I am a vacant stare  
Ignoring every glare  
That might prove to hold  
Just the slightest dare  
Oh I am a vacant stare

And all that I found is now gone  
'Cause anywhere I looked was always wrong 

# # #

As providence would have it, Johnny was baffled as how to best handle the boy, who entered his life when the kid made an ill-advised endeavor to steal Barranca. "First he disarmed me, then rifled through my saddlebags and concludes with daring to think my horse would go off with anybody but me," Johnny thought as he sharply whistled to halt Barranca, spilling the boy from his back to the hard ground as they both stared at each other in disgust. Barranca tossed his mane for good measure to let the odd boy-creature know he didn't belong to him.

Once back on Lancer, Johnny recognized the profound, gut-wrenching internal struggle the kid shielded from Scott and Teresa as the trio discussed what to do with the apparent run-away, unnamed boy, whose brusque attitude bordered on bad manners and bad attitude. He might have thought that he was a tough, independent kid who could take care of his own problems without adult intervention, but Johnny knew better. "Only a few years back, I was just like him," Johnny thought. "I needed my father and he wasn't around."

Scott and Teresa deserted Johnny to "tame" the kid, and so he did, just as he had learned that his bad manners yielded him a whopping from his step-father, to get his attention. But this kid proved to be relentless, as he devised a ladder from bed sheets to abscond with Barranca in the middle of the night, now having a good half-day's head start on Johnny.

Johnny chased after the kid, thinking two things, "No one gets away with my horse and I'll get the truth out of him if I have to wear out his backside." Little did Johnny realize that it was Jelly who had put the notion into the kid's head indirectly to take off with Barranca a second time after he informed the miscreant of Johnny's special shooting skills, "Johnny used to be a hired gun, was the fastest thing this side of the Mississippi and east of China." Ego, since the kid was seeking to hire a gun, he reasoned that Johnny would come after him for his horse and that he could persuade Johnny to work for him, thereby resolving his problems. "Is that a fact," mulled the kid as he formulated his escape with Johnny's valued horse.

The next morning, as the kid predicted, Johnny saddled up to chase after him, only now, Johnny was doing a slow, steady burn that continued to build-up in momentum as he rode after the kid and his horse. A hard day in the saddle also gave Johnny time to reflect upon his own misguided, misspent youth wandering aimlessly from one border town to another, first with his Madre and a bevy of "step-fathers" and later on his own, learning how to use a pistol, which became his trade. He wanted to save this troubled kid from a life-time of misery, if he could only reach him.

Upon trailing the kid to his camp, Johnny whistled and shouted, "Hey kid!"

The kid rushed up to Johnny, "Oh boy, am I glad to see you!" he exclaimed as he barreled right into Johnny's chest.

Johnny pushed him off, "Come on."

"What are you doing?" asked the kid baffled at the rough treatment.

Johnny applied his hat across the kid's chest to express his irritation at the would-be horse-thief as his temper boiled over, "You know something, you have caused me a lot of trouble, you've caused me a lot of trouble," he emphasized with striking him with his hat a third time.

"Nobody asked you to trail after me," he shouted at Johnny.

"You happened to have left with my horse, kid!" Johnny yelled, as he continued to whack the kid with his hat.

"Well, I was fixin' on sending him back."

"Yeah, sure you were," Johnny said as he attempted to grab hold of the kid.

"Well, I would have, I ain't no horse thief! Johnny don't!" he yelled as he ducked from Johnny's grasp and ran to his shotgun by the fire which he pointed at Johnny.

"If I wanted to keep your horse, why didn't I just blow your head off when you came sneaking through here?"

Johnny grabbed at the shotgun, "Give me that. Give me that. Why didn't you?"

"Because I like ya," the kid said.

"I don't believe you," Johnny replied as he tried firing the gun, only to discover that it didn't work.

"Firing thing's broke," the kid said sheepishly.

Johnny tossed the gun down as he glared at the kid and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, "Now for once and for all are you gonna to tell me what you're doing out here?"

"All right, all right. Doesn't matter now anyway. I made such a mess of everything. I didn't get me a gun or a killer or anything else I started out to get," said the kid with the realization that Johnny could potentially wring his neck if he didn't tell the truth.

"Wait a minute, what are you talking about a killer?" asked Johnny as he held the kid's head to make him look directly into Johnny's eyes.

"That was after I talked to the law in Stockton and they just laughed at me," the kid said. "So I decided to hired me a gun and handle things myself."

"Handle what things?" Johnny yelled as he shook the kid. "What do you need the law for?"

"To get after them devils for what they did to my pa," the kid replied.

Johnny released the kid, now confused by the kid's statement, "Now wait a minute." He paused to reflect what the kid said. "Are you hungry?" he asked as he handed over some jerky.

The boy hungrily gnawed at the jerky, as Johnny said, "Now, I want to start from the beginning. Let's start with you pa, okay?" He sat down to wait.

"My pa?" Andy pulled a pocket watch out and showed it to Johnny. "That's my pa. He was the kindest, goodest man you ever saw. Never hurt nobody. He wasn't about to let those miserable sidewinders take over our water. Dan Marvin was one of them. Old Toby Jencks was the other. They joined up and went looking for my pa. They didn't know what they was up to though. My pa was one of the best and bravest you ever saw. They were figuring on taking him by surprise. They were going to take him off the land. But when they saw that he was ready for them they started eating humble pie. My father never figured to be took from behind. He was too noble to think of a thing like that. They took him and they dragged him."

"Why they chase your pa off the land?" Johnny asked.

"Them two sheep stealin' varmints are gobbling up the whole country between them and chasing the homesteaders off. My pa was organizing the little fellers against them. They had to kill him. That's why I took your horse. I was going to sell him and hire me a gunman. I figured when we got our place back, I pay for your horse. Like I said Johnny, I'm not a horse thief."

"Hey kid, you know what you can get for my horse? Twenty-five dollars without a bill of sale," Johnny said as he placed his hand behind the kid's neck to comfort him. "What kind of gun do you expect for that?"

"Somebody like Jack Slade?"

"Come again?"

"Wes Hardin, maybe?"

Johnny laughed, "Kid you're talking about expensive guns."

"Well, I've got a dollar thirty-seven cents too. That makes twenty-six dollars and thirty-seven cents. What could I get for that?"

"Oh, some broke down, bargain counter third rater might take the job."

"That's all? I mean, a really hot gun wouldn't take it?

"No, afraid not." Johnny rose to his feet. "Better get some sleep we have an early start."

"Where to?" the kid asked.

"We're going back to McCall's Crossing."

"Not without a hired gun I ain't," the kid say, standing up to Johnny. "You can drag me there but I'll squidge out of there faster than you can see. Nothing alive is gonna keep me there."

"Well, we see about that," Johnny said coolly. Now take that blanket and sack in," Johnny directed the kid.

Johnny couldn't sack in himself as his feelings ran jumbled every which direction in his mind and in his heart. He stared with vacant eyes at the grey ashes from the fire that had burned itself out, his cup of coffee long since gone cold, as he searched his soul for what he had missed all those years before his father had brought him home. Not only did Johnny know in the pit of his stomach, but it was as if he was enduring what the kid was facing, not simply a broken soul but a missing heart, the kid has been left with no place to start after the law he turned to for help laughed him off, as if the death of his father didn't rate as a matter of consequence for the boy.

No wonder the kid had wandering on foot to find his way and locate any hired gun that he could root out in his quest for vengeance. Instead the kid had managed to stumble upon only ridicule, scorn and emptiness until he tried to latch on to Barranca. The kid was a raw, open wound that need time and space to heal under the guidance of someone who had walked more than a mile in those same boots. The kid if left to fester by a spiteful world would become an angry, violent man who would never amount to much and end up in a pool of blood himself one day in the not so distant future.

Johnny knew without hesitation that he would lend more than his hand to this kid, so that he could look at life in a different shade, right now the kid just saw black no white, wrong no right, darkness no light. He needed to comprehend that the past was gone and that he was only looking at things that were bleak without any hope for a better future. Johnny hoped that he could steer this kid away from the path he was chasing with hasty abandonment.

As the night's darkness continued, Johnny heard the kid's distressed stirrings in his sleep. He stepped over to where the boy was sacked in. Johnny's face was chiseled with worry and concern as it dawned upon him what his own father must have felt the same emotions on way too many occasions for his own sons' well-being. Johnny couldn't help but be concerned for this boy. "If you find an injustice, can you help but seek it out," he said to himself.

"Pa? Pa?" the kid mumbled in his dream-like state, as Johnny removed the tightly held pocket watch from the kid's hand.

Johnny opened the watch to stare at the image of the kid's father, "Kid, you know, I've been out of touch for awhile. But I wouldn't mind hiring out for short money."

"For twenty-five bucks?" asked the kid.

"How about for twenty-six and thirty-seven cents?" Johnny replied.

"Good night Johnny," the kid answered.

Johnny softly smiled at the drowsy kid, sensing that the possibilities of rescuing this kid from facing an uncertain future of living his life in a self-made purgatory were strong. Johnny understood self-made purgatory, the likes of which had plagued him for more than half of his own life until his father had reached out towards him and thereby saved his life, by offering Johnny a fresh start. Just maybe the effort was worth the time for Johnny to finalize the cleansing of his own soul in the process of saving this kid's troubled spirit by righting the wrong that had been done to him. Just maybe they both would be completely healed from their losses and become better men for Johnny's contribution. Johnny felt the kid was worth the chance. "If you find an injustice, can you help but care," he mused.

~Fin~

Sun Dancer

Notes: Heroes of the West ran the episode of "The Kid" today; afterwards, I was listening to one of my Dwight Yoakum CDs while organizing the garage. "Missing Heart" played and I was taken back as to how this fit Johnny staring into the fire while pondering what to do about Andy. If you don't know Dwight Yoakum's music, YouTube features a lot of his videos, which range from pure country to hillbilly rockabilly to punk cowboy. He doesn't disappoint me.

Out of curiosity I researched Jack Slade – who was a born Joseph Alfred Slade (January 22, 1831 – March 10, 1864) and died long before Andy would have been looking for his services. Slade's exploits spawned numerous legends, many of them false. His image (especially via Mark Twain in Roughing It) as the vicious killer of up to 26 victims was greatly exaggerated: Only one killing by Slade (that of Andrew Ferrin, above ) is undisputed. But his ferocious reputation, combined with a drinking problem, caused his downfall: He was fired by the Central Overland for drunkenness in November 1862. During a drunken spree in Virginia City, Montana, he was lynched by local vigilantes on March 10, 1864, for disturbing the peace. He was buried in Salt Lake City, Utah, on July 20, 1864.

While John Wesley Hardin (May 26, 1853 – August 19, 1895) seems to have spent most of his life in Texas, under arrest, in jail or inconvenienced in some manner such as posses trying to run him down to not have been available to travel to McCall's Crossing to hire out, as much as he might have wanted to escape the Texas climate.


End file.
